Pros
Short term you can make decent money.
Cons
When I first started at Inogen, I was excited to be one of the first hiring classes in the Cleveland market. We were given wristbands imprinted with “0 turnover with 100% Committment.” (Misspelling included – and prophetic.) What followed has been a rollercoaster ride. I hope that this constructive criticism leads to better days ahead for those I am leaving behind, as it is intended to be professionally candid and in no way malicious. I’ve made good money in Cleveland dollars over the past several years and the company helped set me up for my new opportunity. For that, I am grateful. Most of 2018 was wonderful, largely because of the culture created by my manager. We were a tight knit group who worked hard and had fun. Because we were carefully chosen, we were (and still are) the best performing team in Cleveland. The office had a special energy that made me want to refer every sales colleague I knew with a good reputation to come work for Inogen, and many did. Most were high performers and some still remain. Soon, however, it became apparent that hiring standards were being reduced from high quality skill set to warm body. The rep force was expanded too rapidly and out of proportion to leads as market size was overestimated. Our former CEO pointed to a pie chart to demonstrate total addressable market but could not answer how much of the market was already penetrated by cash purchasing patients – our competitors’ penetration, or even by our own cash purchasing customers, or factor in average creditworthiness or income level (read: ability to pay cash) of our target market as this reckless growth strategy was executed. Reps hired en masse were fired en masse and the company has yet to recover from the spiral launched by this critical error. Later, morale began to deteriorate as feedback on the most important subjects – compensation, time off, lead ownership (7 day lead rule, RDMs), career growth and mental health -- were ignored. Personal responsibility and accountability were emphasized for the sales rep, but to date, we have not seen the company take responsibility for creating buggy CRM systems and failing to communicate clear expectations and major changes. Cleveland office management is not at fault for direction coming from the corporate office. Far too often, upper level and sales operations management pushes the responsibility and negative consequences of its own decisions down to the front-line rep force. As a result, Inogen is not currently competitive in the following areas, which need to be properly addressed: Training – - training is minimal (two weeks of new hire training with no ongoing sales force development) and largely impersonal with heavy use of video tutorials and lecture format. - Classes are too large. - The SalesLoft and Lightning rollouts – complete overhauls of our systems – should require a full day of in-person or interactive virtual training. Our training was about an hour, after which we were left to figure it out ourselves with the assistance of our managers who received the same unacceptable training. - Inogen training should be overhauled based on adult learning theory and FLIP learning principles, using teach-backs and other interactive formats to improve learning outcomes. Coaching and Development – Because team sizes are so large, it is difficult for managers to provide every rep with ongoing coaching to foster a development trajectory. This a companywide issue, not a local one, made more crucial due to compliance issues. Like class sizes, team sizes should be no larger than 15. Frequent compliance changes require clear direction, training and coaching from team management particularly because proper guidance is not forthcoming from the compliance department – or the guidance offered is, in fact, wrong. From personal experience with flagged and scrubbed violations, I can tell you that I often knew the compliance rules better than the compliance department itself. Compensation – The incentive structure does not promote career longevity and employee retention. - No COLAs or annual base pay merit raises, both critical to creating environments that encourage consistent performance. Consider the sales rep perspective: o The longer I work here, the less purchasing power I have due to inflation – even as a high performer. o Combined with the company raising our goal and cutting our commissions, we’ve had our pay cut in two different ways. As a result, though my sales numbers were trending higher in 2021 than 2019, my compensation is lower. - Repeatedly, the company has decreased payouts and increased goals to levels that are clearly designed to purge employees. This began in May 2019, happened again in 2020 when advertising was cut to the bone, and occurred again with the massive pay cut in June 2021. - We have waited 3+ years for a resolution on a better RDM working model. In the overwhelming majority of cases, 75+% of the sales duties on a sale that is “RDMed” were performed by the DTP rep. Thus, losing the sale, revenue credit and Rolling 90 Day (job security) credit due to a technicality really brings down company morale. When a person is RDMed, it affects the rep’s psyche as well as the organization’s: it’s shared with other reps and it creates further low morale amongst DTP. Imagine being in that position and having it happen repeatedly. That’s life in DTP. Most of all: it is a process that is not customer friendly and, in a lot of cases, leads to loss of sale for the company period. - In June, our VP of Sales was asked on a call “what do you think top performing reps should make?” Question sidestepped and never answered. During the call on 9/15 the question was ignored again. Certainly, new hires are told what top performing reps can expect earn under the new incentive plan. Shouldn’t the same information be shared with current sales reps? Career growth – At hiring, we were told the path to senior rep was two years plus performance. At two years, our new VP of Sales was “rethinking the program.” We had to wait over a year longer for raises that we had earned based on what was initially explained to us when new to the company. With this, a new Level 2 model with a new senior rep position was created for Q3 2021 rollout. We are nearing the end of Q3 – year 4 in my Inogen tenure. Frankly, I’ve been performing many of the responsibilities of a senior rep for at least 3 of them, without the extra compensation. Where’s the rollout? In my eyes, it’s another broken commitment. Additionally, the company prefers outside hires to internal promotions. I was told by lead hiring manager that I need to leave the company to acquire more skills. I am doing just that. The fact that the head of talent acquisition would rather hire outside talent instead of cultivating internal talent says all I need to know. I am not unique. There are many talented people overlooked by our HR department for internal job postings. Financially, there are no incentives to advance. Promotions require financial sacrifice, limiting the rise of experienced talent up through the ranks. Again, the company’s growth suffers due to a lack of understanding in the upper ranks of the front-line sales rep experience. Sales Force Burnout – Happy, healthy employees are well-rested employees. Inogen’s vacation policy does not support employee health or longevity and, in fact, penalizes sales reps who take earned vacation time because they lose their leads and potential deals they are currently working while receiving only the base pay amount of a (very) low figure for medical device sales. The result is a penalty in the form of lost opportunity cost in the thousands of dollars. Employees in this type of incentive payment structure are being encouraged to limit or skip vacations altogether, leading to sales rep burnout, reduced long-term performance, morale and longevity. Inogen’s overtime policy is based on maintaining performance to retain overtime and lead access privileges, further contributing to an environment where high performing reps are dis-incented to take vacation time. The sales rep perspective: - Vacation pay is about 33% of typical pay. - When you return, you have lost most of the patients you were working and it will take a full two or more weeks to refill your lead and opportunity pipelines - even with the “boost in leads.” - As a result, you have a down month. You lose your MFC/Delta Force lead privileges, so your pipeline recovery time bleeds into the next month because your pipeline isn’t fully rebuilt. The following month, you lose overtime privileges because of you had fewer leads and a pipeline that wasn’t fully rebuilt for much of the month. This puts you into the fear of low Rolling 90-Day performance. I worried about my Rolling 90 Day performance when I took more than two consecutive days of PTO in a month – because I’ve found that taking more than 2 days in a row of PTO significantly harms your month. Many reps are caught in this cycle – mostly average performers – but they make up 60% of the rep force that you want to retain. That means at least 60% of your employees feel uneasy about their job security if they take vacation — and if they’re a high performer whose job is relatively secure, they still feel uneasy about their next 2-3 paychecks post-PTO. - The current structure insures that most reps take a heavy financial, performance and psychological hit from taking several days in a row of PTO, making it impossible to return to work refreshed, reinvigorated and in top form. Morale and Mental Health – Inogen’s compensation, PTO and other policies have combined to create a morale and even mental health crisis among the sales force that goes far beyond the pandemic. - The sales rep perspective: We speak with sick, depressed and often lonely individuals as many as six days a week. Our goals have been increased and our pay has decreased. We take a severe pay cut if we use our PTO. Our call activity requirements and talk time requirements have increased. With each development, I’ve watched my coworkers’ happiness decline. I’ve seen some have full blown mental health breakdowns. I’ve run myself into the ground. It’s ironic that a company that sells freedom and independence in its products has company policies that promote the exact opposite with its employees. We have consistently asked for policy changes but our requests have been largely ignored. If you polled every employee and asked them to respond honestly about how this job impacts mental health, I believe you would be surprised, if not alarmed. Marketing – Too often, the sales force is left to overcome poor marketing decisions. For example: - Our recent price increase uses numbers that make no sense from a marketing communications standpoint. Pricing should be rounded off to the nearest 49, 99 or 95 based on marketing and consumer behavior science. - Before the chip shortage, we had too many SKUs and they were poorly named. The Freedom 1, Freedom 2, Freedom 3 and Freedom Bundle all sound the same which is confusing. Some pricing didn’t have logical step-ups in features/price. - Inogen One G3, Inogen One G4, etc – There are two numbers in the name of the device. This is inherently confusing. Additionally, G3, G4, G5 is hard to say clearly over the phone for a hard of hearing patient to understand. A complete rebrand would make it easier for patients to understand. Inogen One and Inogen One Plus for the G4 and G5, respectively, would make more sense – and that’s just by shamelessly borrowing from Apple’s naming system. - Even as the market leader, the name Inogen can be problematic. The overwhelming majority of patients we speak with call the company “Indigen” rather than Inogen. Perhaps a name change is worth considering. CRM and Other Sales Rep Support – The lack of native sales knowledge of the needs of the sales force among the Senior Operations Team is apparent in the way the “soldiers” are not only insufficiently trained and coached but also poorly armed for deployment into the field. Our version of Salesforce is a buggy mess that routinely does not save or load data properly. Instead of addressing the fundamental issues with the software, we’ve kept papering on plugins and add-ons to Salesforce that only add to the problem (SalesLoft being the most recent Salesforce snafu). Because of this, you have reps losing sales and the company losing money as a result. This doesn’t even begin to factor in the low morale over lead disputes/lost sales – most of which are created by Salesforce’s issues themselves! From Priority View, Automatic Lead Redistribution, to Dupe Blocker, to LeanData, to now SalesLoft, every plug in never addresses the core issue: that Senior Sales Operations has zero native sales experience or knowledge, and therefore every new Salesforce initiative has serious flaws upon rollout that are never properly addressed. The lack of willingness to communicate, ask for feedback and include suggestions from reps and management shows in the lack of enthusiasm in adoption in every rollout of a supposed “improvement.” Core Values Failures - Communication is top down, not open. - “We live up to our commitments” - Significant sales force issues such as training, coaching, compensation, paid-time off, career growth, morale, mental health and burnout, RDM working relationship, and sales support infrastructure have been left unaddressed or addressed ineffectively for my entire tenure. - The patent (G3 and TAV) and shareholder lawsuits cast doubt on the corporation’s morality - both products had patent lawsuits attached to them - the G3 being the sieve columns. - The TAV failure and sales force mismanagement on management’s strategic and operational competence. - The result is a breach of trust between management and the frontline sales force that investment in new technology and outside recruitment neither fixes nor addresses. I hope for the best for this company, my co-workers and its future. It’s my sincere wish that this input will lead to constructive developments. Unfortunately, the above is why, in no uncertain terms, people are leaving you faster than you can replace.